In January 2008, in Kassel, Hessen, Germany, my sweet mother was struggling with the ravages & vestiges of kidney cancer & was on her near-deathbed. Lynell & I opted nonetheless to take a short visit to our client’s target ancestral village (Schlieben, Sachsen) in order to outright exhaust the parish registers of all ancestral family members’ birth, marriage & death entries. We took digital photographs of each pertinent ancestral family member’s entry.
The Grants Pass, Oregon client, Betty Barry, & her Roseburg, Oregon sister were elated that they were able to get all this digitally-documented research for about the price of just one round-trip ticket from Salt Lake City to Frankfurt, Germany!
No, we don’t get the marriages of every sibling–just the target ancestral sibling.
However, we do get each of their births, for the family history research is not only more complete, but the birth record of a child is often the source of ascertaining the parish of origin of the mother, that is, if from a different place.
We returned in time to help escort Mom over to the Other Side. Apparently, her mother & also beloved half-sister, Irmgard Boll Muessler were there on the Other Side to greet her. Mom, in her final minute of life, markedly energized, tried in vain to pull herself out of bed and called out “Mama!” and “Irmel!”
It is interestingly supportive to note that Mom had not mentioned Irmel’s name in several months. Although this event frightened my adult “little” sister, Lynell & I knew and taught my sister what had happened. She might now have a seed of faith.
